


Ships of Exploration

by niqaeli



Category: Original Work
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2003-04-17
Updated: 2003-04-17
Packaged: 2017-10-31 00:06:12
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 359
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/337708
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/niqaeli/pseuds/niqaeli





	Ships of Exploration

Once upon a time, we sailed the oceans, in royal ships with sails and rigging. We've tamed the ocean, learned her ways and we've harnessed the earth to power our boats, no longer are we bound to the winds and their fickle ways.

There's little left for us, on the oceans. There's things yet undiscovered, but there is no romance left, we've sucked her dry.

And perhaps that is good. The men who sailed the oceans, when 'once upon a time' was 'now', would have killed for what we take for granted.

The ocean was a cruel and powerful mistress, but we rose up, revolted, and now she is an ill-tempered but unimportant sidenote. We have gone quite literally _over_ her authority, with our planes and helicopters. She strikes at us with storms and fury, but even that is ineffective--we have gone so far as to even to learn the weather's patterns.

We sail the oceans no more. They are not happy subjects, but we _rule_ them, now.

Where is the ocean, now? Where is the untamed unknown?

Beyond the bright, blue sky.

The ocean we shall sail in the future is an inky black one, and it holds terrors we've yet to imagine. Space is the final unknown, the last place left for us to explore--we've explored and conquered the planet.

It baffles me that we've come so far and yet we shy back from this last frontier. Would that I could, I would go, right now. I would sail the ocean of the sky, and face the terrors that accompany it.

Would that I could...

But others wouldn't. And therefore I cannot, for there is no ship to sail the stars. We dream about it, write about it, fictionalize its first forays, but no one has built a starship, no one yet will try.

I'll have to build my own, and find a few who would sail with me. And perhaps _I_ will never sail the stars, perhaps it will be my daughter, or her daughter.

But I swear you this, my family shall fly and so shall others. The whole of _humanity_ shall _fly_!


End file.
